I have a theory:  Politeness is killing CX these days.

Now, no, of course, I don’t mean your politeness as a brand and that of your front-line team members to your Customers.  By all means, keep that up!

I mean that, as a society, our politeness is keeping us from delivering and receiving better Customer Experience in general.

Again, I can hear objections right away:  What ‘society’ are you seeing, Z?  Where are you finding such a polite society?

Okay, okay… It’s fair to say that we’ve likely coarsened as a society these days, sure.  And, depending on where you are, you may see regional differences (even between the city of Denver and the mountain towns just an hour or so west, people interact differently), so that’s a good point.

Perhaps what I mean instead of politeness is acquiescence.

While the modern, Western world in general, and definitely American culture specifically, has a reputation of boisterousness and brashness, we nevertheless have a bit of a go-along/get-along default setting that often keeps us from calling out ridiculousness when we see it, especially individually.

And speaking of individuals, often those who do push back are seen as jerks who are unnecessarily stirring up trouble and unfairly accused (even if they’re deliberately and studiously not) of ‘taking it out’ on front-line employees.

Yes, by the way, I do mean to call this out as a societal thing (which is to say, not just us as Customers).  I’ll often consider what we put ourselves through with COVID all those years ago.  And yes, I use that active first-person plural grammatical structure deliberately.  Tell yourself how individualistic and jealous of our own prerogatives we Americans (or you personally) are by nature all you’d like, but we still let ourselves be locked up in our homes masked for almost two years.  And it was preposterous.

But aside from that, and not to get political anyway (not that it should be considered political to make that observation, but here we are), we’re truly a supine culture when it comes to how we allow brands to treat us.

Usually it’s in tiny, minorly irritating ways.  Consider Costco.  Now, I love Costco, and this isn’t to bag on them (well, not generally at least), but I’ve always been vexed by their demand that I produce and show for approval my membership card simply to gain entry to their store.  Their demand to see my receipt in order to leave is actually a bit insulting, but given that it’s part of the terms of my membership, I’m a little less offended by that (curious because the implication being that somehow I’m gently being accused of shoplifting, but I suppose a gripe for another day).

Point being, showing my card when I enter is not the most irritating part of my day, but an inconvenience for sure.  After all, I’ll understandably be required to show my membership status by presenting my card in order to be checked out, a short time and 50 feet away, as it is anyway.  Why hassle me for it just to walk in?  I may simply be pricing out delicious savory rotisserie chicken, not necessarily intending to purchase anything that day anyway, so maybe I won’t need it at all.  And, from a business perspective, why not invite any who are curious unimpeded entry (without making them go through some hard-sell to get a can’t-purchase-without-it-anyway-day-pass, that is) with the prospect of falling enamored with all that could be bought were he only to purchase a membership?  Sounds like a pretty straight-forward marketing miss to me.

They’ll tell you that there’s some mythical way in which, by monitoring entries into the store and running it all through some instant algorithm, they more efficiently man their checkout lanes so you breeze through once you’re ready.  As a Process Engineer and Operations Research Analyst, that sounds intriguing, but if it seems to you that it’s a little ‘trying too hard,’ you’re right.  They’re not doing that.  Even if they could or wanted to, simply keeping track of how many people enter doesn’t require showing (or, these days, scanning) your card when you come in.  Cameras and AI can do all that for them.  Again, that is, if that actually worked.  Which it doesn’t.

In fact, that’s something you can test yourself as you wait in line to checkout, with plenty of time standing in line to fish out your card.  (So, yeah, the other excuse, that it saves time since you don’t have to go digging through your wallet or purse to get your card at the register because you had it out all along from when you entered, is…also a myth.)

Anyway, all of this not to bash on Costco (again, I love them, and it’s not the end of the world).  But this is yet another minor inconvenience that we all put up with simply because brands say we have to.

Why do we allow it?

Moreover, as brands, we should be concerned that (and when) we don’t hear about stupid little things that we do to aggravate our Customers often enough.  From a CX perspective, people who are putting up with your bullshit are not helping you by being compliant and easy to deal with…they’re enabling your stupid processes.

We need those who are willing to call us out on it in order to represent the vast majority of our Customers who are simply tolerating those little things—that do add up, we should remember—daily that, if fixed, would go a long way to produce much better brand experiences.  What’s worse, often when Customers do sound off, we give ourselves an excuse (“Get a load of this jerk making a huge deal over it.”) to blow off what some Customers, even in their less-elegant manner, are trying to tell us.

So by all means, let’s treat ourselves with shared dignity and grace.  But for heaven’s sake, make your voice heard.  Even about those little things!